


Waking

by TwoHeadedDragon



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Amnesia, BotW is actually dark AF and I will die on this hill, Comfort, Flashbacks, I'm sorry I keep hurting these characters, Nightmares, Post-Breath of the Wild, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Trauma, Violence, i actually love them, intimate partner violence though unintended, these guys are both so broken right now, zelink I guess but it hurts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-07-25
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:15:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25498216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TwoHeadedDragon/pseuds/TwoHeadedDragon
Summary: In which trauma is a bitch and there are no easy answers
Relationships: Link/Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 69





	Waking

In the night, sometimes she wakes screaming, tangled in blankets, imagining them to be smoke and Malice. She wakes with the feel of blood on her hands, quivering with the knowledge that she has to fight, has to contain, has to destroy. She wakes with tears in her eyes and curses on her lips and despair in her heart. When he wipes the water from her cheeks with calloused thumbs and brings her back to _now_ , she knows that it is over. That she is free now. That she is safe. One night as she fights the battle again, she hits him hard enough to split his lip before she wakes. He looks at her with compassion she doesn’t understand and forgiveness she doesn’t deserve and his eyes are lodestones. He is as steady and calm as he has always been. That first day, they had both collapsed into a single bed and slept from late afternoon until lunchtime the next day. After that, he is sitting in a chair by the bed whenever she wakes in the night, but it takes her almost a week to realize it. He is awake when she goes to sleep and awake in the mornings when she gets up to the smell of his cooking. During the days, she catches him dozing in the saddle or staring into nothingness over the cookpot. 

Finally, she takes her courage in both hands and fractures the companionable breakfast silence between them abruptly with, “Do you ever actually sleep?” 

For a moment, just a fleeting moment, he looks alarmed. Then the mask slams down again and he smiles a smile that is slightly too sudden. “Of course I sleep. I just don’t need very much, that’s all. And I love the sunrise.”

“Mhm,” she says. Her mouth is full of omelet. In all that timeless time, it had never occurred to her to miss food. “I’ll remember that next time I have to poke you awake when you’re about to fall off your horse.” He ducks his head a little. She takes a breath and speaks too fast. “You can talk to me, you know. That is, I’m not the only one that’s been through hell and you’re always there for me and I want to be here for you. That is...I mean, if you want that.” She trails off, feeling as awkward as she ever has.

He looks up at her then and his eyes are the sky at midday. “I’m fine. Really. And your hell lasted a century. I just had a year of waiting for the rain to stop so I could climb things.” She reaches over and swats his arm, laughing. They both know what he went through to regain his strength and be ready to come help her. She hadn’t been able to see everything, but she had seen enough. In her memory, she sees him panic as the tree branch in his hand breaks against an enemy’s shield. She sees him find a rusty sword and test its weight, bewilderment on his face as he finds he knows what to do with it. She sees him growing stronger, helping people, remembering fragments of himself. Recreating the rest. Becoming. She herself is not yet whole again and possibly never will be. It is unfair of her to assume he is as broken as she is.

That night, she wakes in the dark, calmly for once, to find him asleep beside her in the bed. His face is tranquil, hair fallen over his cheek, absurd eyelashes trembling slightly as he dreams. She is struck by the absolute peace of this moment. His chest rises and falls evenly, and she watches it for a while until it lulls her back to sleep. She wakes curled against him, with his arm around her waist, but they don’t speak of it. That day he doesn’t fall asleep on the road, but she doesn’t think he sleeps that night, or the next either. She doesn’t press him.

She wakes to the sound of someone dying. She is instantly awake, grabbing for the knife she’s been keeping under her pillow, trembling with the suddenness of consciousness, mind whirling. He is in the bed next to her again. He is curled around himself, eyes tight shut, body rigid, limbs twitching. The noise is coming from him, a low guttural sound that might be rage or fear or fatal agony. She reaches for him out of pure instinct, says his name, touches his arm so softly. He moves like a sprung trap, grabbing her by the throat and throwing her to the floor and his eyes are empty. She has no breath to shout at him, so she digs her nails into his cheek and sees the moment when he returns to himself. His hands leave her neck like it is an ember in a forge and a different sound escapes his throat. He bolts from the room and on the other side of the pounding of her heart she hears the sound of retching. When she has her breath back and has stopped shaking, she goes to find him but he is gone.

He’s back in the morning, with fresh meat and a bag full of mushrooms and eyes full of something she is afraid to name. They sit in silence staring into the fire. It could be any morning. Several times one or the other of them draws breath to speak, but the silence tastes like Malice and it burns their tongues. Finally, he turns and looks at her and then she is back in the rain, back on the worst day of several of her lives, holding him as he dies, and the pain in his eyes that night is the pain in his eyes right now. 

His voice is almost inaudible when he says, “I’m sorry.”

She looks at him and says, “I know.” He scared her badly, but he didn’t bruise her. She can see the marks she left on his cheek, three angry red parallel lines. They look like a rune. They look like a brand. Holding his gaze and moving slowly, so agonizingly slowly, she reaches for his face and touches them. He still jumps when she makes contact and she draws her hand back. “I’m sorry, too,” she whispers and she means for his face but she really means for failing everyone and letting all of this happen, and most of all she means for stealing his memory and his choice and forcing him back into a life where monsters come for him in the night. She needs to say these things out loud, he needs to hear them, and so she finally speaks. Everything he has done has been for her. Everything he lost, everything he has had to become, is because of her. Whatever he fights in his dreams might as well be her, so she can hardly blame him for…

He cuts her off with a glance and his eyes are Guardian-fire. All he says is “Stop. Please.” He shudders under the weight of her words, the temptation of the absolution she is offering. To accept it would be to allow her to take this burden from him and allow her to continue to fight as she has fought for a hundred years. Alone. It is what she believes she deserves. 

Slowly, he begins to speak. “We don’t know what would have happened. It might all have happened exactly the same, but sooner. If I had been stronger, less reckless, better prepared, I might at least have saved your father. I might have lived to fight by your side, then.” He swallows and his mouth is filled with ash and rain. “‘This is how things had to happen.’ You know she was rarely wrong.” He quirks an eyebrow at her, looking for a response. She gives him none. She is the ice on Mount Lanayru. He sighs, runs his hands over his face. 

“It’s true that you didn’t give me a choice when you put me in the Waters.” Painful acceptance closes her eyelids briefly. “I was a little indisposed at the time you would have asked.” The ghost of a laugh from her nose reaches his ears like a hymn. “When I woke, it was blinding and terrifying and lonely. I didn’t know what I had lost, but I knew it was gone. I knew I’d had a single purpose, and that I had failed. But then your voice called me into the sunlight. If you had asked, I would have chosen this.”

“You would have chosen this,” she repeats, temper flaring. She is angry that he doesn’t berate her. She is angry at herself. “You would have chosen violence and fighting and pain and death and…and…forgetting everyone you ever loved.” She says this like dragging a blade across her palm.

He says simply, “I would have chosen you.” He lets it sit between them for a moment, then continues, words pouring from him like the rain that washed his blood away. He wants to wash away her guilt. “I would have chosen sunsets over the desert and sunrise on the ocean. I would have chosen collecting bugs for children simply because they asked. I would have chosen to see the hope that grows in the ruins. I would have chosen life, and fate, and the destiny I accepted before I was a man old enough to understand that was what I had done.” His hand hovers over hers. He says again, “I would have chosen you.” But what he thinks is, “I know how your frightened pulse feels under my hands.” He thinks, “I hurt more than I help. You should run from me.” He remembers the blinding horror at the knowledge that he himself could be something for her to fear in the night. His hand drops to his own knee and he whispers again, “I’m sorry.”

She swallows, tasting iron. She needs to move, to pace. She needs to fly up into the sun and be burned to dust. She needs to hold him and convince him everything will be alright. She manages to reach her hand to his to complete the circuit between them and his eyes are hope. She cannot speak, not now. She rises and begins to pack her saddlebag. The road stretches out across vast beauty that cuts like a knife as far as they can see.

That night, she reaches for him and he reaches back.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I'm new around here. Constructive criticism is very welcome, but I'm kinda new to that too so please be kind I guess?


End file.
